Action figures have long been a perfect compliment to comic books, since every kid (or kid at heart) has that natural desire to act out adventures with their favorite heroes off the drawn page. Every so often, a unique style of figure comes along that breaks the mold, so to speak. Each Saturday, Donny B will be showcasing various offerings from Art Asylum's take on the 'block figure', with a weekly spotlight on Minimates.

Aside from a relatively short stint at Wal Mart and Target, the only "big name" store to ever carry Minimates was Toys R Us. For the most part, the only readily available outlet for Minimates is either a local comic book shop, or one of about a dozen online retailers. This makes sense, considering the "collector toy line" nature of Minimates. They may look like they have little kid appeal (and apparently Art Asylum banks on that age group as their major demographic), but really the only people who go hard core for these toys are the more grown up collectors.

That being said, Toys R Us has gained a lot of love from the Minimate fan base, since they are the only national chain to carry Minimates (apparently they haven't brought 'mates to their worldwide stores just yet). But it's not simply a bigger outlet for the same thing you could find at your local comic dealer or an e-tailer. Toys R Us has brokered a deal with Diamond Select Toys (the company who owns Art Asylum, creator of Minimates) to deliver customers "TRU exclusive" releases, such as the release of Cosmic Silver Surfer:

Behind the Image:

I wanted to give Silver Surfer the appearance of surfing through some sort of cosmic something (maybe a nebula cloud? Who knows - it's space after all. Anything could work. Go watch an episode of Star Trek and you'll see what I mean), but without relying too much on photoshop.

So I simply placed him inside of my car's tailpipe, and then changed the color scheme in post production to give it a more "cold" feel.

On Ebay: Silver Surfer